Sea of Thieves byggdes nyligen ut med expansionen Hungering Deep som tvingar piratbesättningar på Rares digitala hav att samarbeta och kommunicera med varandra för att lyckas med att dräpa ett enormt havsmonster. Det är ett rejält kliv från den 'allt du ser är fiender'-mentalitet som tidigare präglat spelet. Nu har Rare avslöjat mer om planerna för framtiden och berättat vad de lärt sig sedan lanseringen i en väl tilltagen intervju där bland annat executive producer Joe Neate säger:
We sat down as soon as the launch craziness ended, like the first week or so, we managed to get on top of any scale and stability issues that we had. And then we literally sat in a room for about a week with loads of post-it notes. Mike, the design team, and everyone else were going through all of the forums, looking at all the feedback. Broadly, the response from the community was that this game is great, we love what you're doing, but give us more things to do. Yeah, threats in the world, all of that stuff. And then we just started deciding which order did we want to grow this in based on feedback, based on what we want to see see.
En av de saker vi snart kommer stöta på är skepp med skelettbesättningar kontrollerade av artificiell intelligens. Dessa seglar runt haven och gör livet surt för människor, och Neate förklarar hur man tänkt när man skapat dessa:
Skeleton ships was one of the biggest things actually because for years now we've been saying to our community every sail on the horizon is another player and explaining why we didn't wanna do AI ships because we wanted every encounter to be emergent. But we've seen that...well, there's a few things that feed into it in terms of players' love for ship combat, and we love to drive different interactions between players. So ship combat is cool between players, but like in Hungering Deep, we love to see different crews team up and then go take down stuff together.
Design director Mike Chapman lägger till:
It's a mix of giving players what they want, putting that Sea of Thieves spin on it, but also surprising them. It's the fact that a lot of players would ask, "I would really like an expanded world. I want more regions to explore." We haven't just given them that, we've actually gone and made the visuals a core part of the gameplay and added in a whole region with volcanoes that's geologically unstable. We want to surprise players, and there's things we do in the game that won't be expected and I think both of those aspects are at a healthy mix right now.
Senior designer Shelly Preston hade dessutom lite smaskiga nyheter att berätta om den kommande expansionen Forsaken Shores
Forsaken Shores is coming out this September. This expansion has a new world area. There's three seas, which are the different areas in the Sea of Thieves world. They have different visual styles, but they're all kind of the same in terms of difficulty and challenge. So what we really wanted to do with the new area was for this expansion was for it to be visually striking, and a different, newer experience. We wanted it to have a major impact on gameplay as well, as it's about a perilous voyage.
Part of the shroud that surrounded the Sea of Thieves [map] will recede and there'll be a new area that you can get to, but you'll never start in that area. It's up to players to opt in to go on that voyage, and think about when you want to take on these more challenging, but more rewarding voyages. And then when you sail out there, it's all kind of fire and ash. It's like a volcanic kind of area. We really felt excited about this idea of making the world, the islands themselves almost are turning against you while you're questing.
Kort sagt låter det som att Sea of Thieves-fansen har något att se fram emot. Det är dessutom ett flertal expansioner planerade efter Forsaken Shores och förhoppningsvis får vi veta mer om vad inom en snar framtid.
Tack Gamespot
